Speaker 1: If you're a knowledge worker, the quality of your thinking
Speaker 1: ultimately determines the quality of your work. So how do
Speaker 1: you improve the quality of your thinking?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a pretty big question now.
Speaker 1: One person trying to answer that question is Tim Urban,
Speaker 1: the author of the incredibly successful blog called Wait But Why.
Speaker 1: Tim writes about everything from careers to the state of
Speaker 1: American power, to Elon Musk's vision for the future, and
Speaker 1: of course he writes about thinking and how we can
Speaker 1: get better at it. Tim shares how to break big,
Speaker 1: difficult ideas into smaller, more manageable components, and outlines how
Speaker 1: he fights procrastination.
Speaker 2: My name is doctor amanthe Immer.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 1: can so Inventium, and this is how I work, a
Speaker 1: show about how to help you.
Speaker 2: Do your best work.
Speaker 1: One of Tim's most notable public appearances was his ted
Speaker 1: talk about procrastination, which has been viewed by over sixty
Speaker 1: three million people, and if you haven't seen it, if
Speaker 1: you're not one of those sixty three million people, you
Speaker 1: should check it out immediately because it's brilliant. I wanted
Speaker 1: to know whether Tim had developed new strategies for beating
Speaker 1: procrastination since he delivered that Ted talk several years ago.
Speaker 3: My life's work is trying to conquer my own procrastination.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I like that you said that they're working
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of articles on how to beat procrastination,
Speaker 3: a lot of advice. And what I find is that
Speaker 3: most procrastinators, like myself, read one of those articles, we
Speaker 3: get super inspired.
Speaker 4: We think I'm doing this, this is it, I'm doing
Speaker 4: that from now on. I'm all set. I just figured on.
Speaker 4: And then maybe we do it for.
Speaker 3: A day or two, or we don't even do it
Speaker 3: at all. Uh, and then and then move back to
Speaker 3: where we were right. So what actually works? I think
Speaker 3: there's two categories of solution here. One is a picture
Speaker 3: that your habits are kind of a boat that you're in,
Speaker 3: and if you're a procrastinator, it means something about the
Speaker 3: boat's not working well, like there's a there's a leak,
Speaker 3: or there's something's broken. And so the two categories of
Speaker 3: solution for something like this are you repair the boat
Speaker 3: in a permanent way, like you actually fix the thing
Speaker 3: and it's fixed, or you you put temporary duct tape
Speaker 3: or something over the pole and it's not permanent.
Speaker 4: It's not actually fixed.
Speaker 3: The boat's still broken, but it's the leak isn't happening
Speaker 3: right now because you've you've taped it up for a one.
Speaker 3: And so what I've been trying for the obviously ideally
Speaker 3: you're the first category where you're actually changing your habits
Speaker 3: and you're growing as a human and you're you're not
Speaker 3: the way you used to be anymore. And so for
Speaker 3: that category, the it's I've been trying to.
Speaker 4: A couple of things. I've been trying to remind myself
Speaker 4: that even a.
Speaker 3: Big you know, we have this idea in the US
Speaker 3: at least that forty hours is a good work you know,
Speaker 3: eight hour day is a good work day.
Speaker 4: It's like half the half the day.
Speaker 3: You know, you have sixteen awaking hours, put in eight
Speaker 3: good hours of working done a full day. If you
Speaker 3: actually go into most people's offices or most people's workplaces
Speaker 3: who say they work forty hours a week, can you
Speaker 3: look at what they're actually doing and how much of
Speaker 3: that is really on focusing deep focus, on real work.
Speaker 3: The number is usually a lot less than forty. And
Speaker 3: I would say I've found that I think as a writer,
Speaker 3: at least if I put in three deep, focused hours,
Speaker 3: that's a huge that's a great day, like I I I,
Speaker 3: but but but it's the psychology is weird where in
Speaker 3: my head it's like if I wake up at you know,
Speaker 3: eight thirty, and I think, if I just pulled my
Speaker 3: lap up onto the bed and work till eleven thirty,
Speaker 3: I'm done. Something about that doesn't It's like the perfectionist
Speaker 3: to me is like, well, no, I have to work
Speaker 3: all day. And what I find is that I'll spend
Speaker 3: the whole day sitting around working, except I'm like in
Speaker 3: this kind of gray areas where I'm supposed to be
Speaker 3: working but I'm not, or that I am a little
Speaker 3: and then I stop and there's a lot of breaks,
Speaker 3: and so it's this kind of gray area, not really playing,
Speaker 3: not really.
Speaker 4: Working zone that I spend a ton of time.
Speaker 3: And I call it the dark playground where you're you're
Speaker 3: kind of in leisure time you're not supposed to be
Speaker 3: in leasure time. I will, i will put in a
Speaker 3: huge amounts of hours each week, and then I'll find
Speaker 3: that in the end, if I really were honest about
Speaker 3: how many of those are real hours, it adds up
Speaker 3: to about three hours a day at a really good week.
Speaker 3: So the point is what I'm trying to get better
Speaker 3: at is less of this permanent gray area between work
Speaker 3: and play and more like, I am going to get
Speaker 3: my three hours done, and the psychology of that to
Speaker 3: be like instead of you know, thinking I have this
Speaker 3: whole work day ahead. No no, no, If I just wait
Speaker 3: three hours, I'm free for the whole day. But really
Speaker 3: doing it. Doing those three hours because it compiles that's
Speaker 3: fifteen hours a week, that's sixty real hours a month.
Speaker 4: You can fly through projects and then genuinely on the
Speaker 4: other side of it having time.
Speaker 3: So it's turning grades to black and white where you're
Speaker 3: not just doing one side of the yin yang, but
Speaker 3: you're actually doing the other two. You're genuinely playing when
Speaker 3: you're you're not giving yourself guilt free off time where
Speaker 3: you're doing high quality stuff and you're having fun in
Speaker 3: guilt free fund.
Speaker 4: That's it recharges your battery for the hardcore work.
Speaker 3: Zone the next day. So it's either going to be
Speaker 3: a hardcore work zone or nothing at all. That's where
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get That is much more effective than
Speaker 3: kind of sitting here all day not.
Speaker 4: You know, kind of working. So there's a bunch of things.
Speaker 4: I have a bunch of strategies like that.
Speaker 3: Now the second pile of strategies is the duct tape, right,
Speaker 3: And so what I'm trying to do is while I
Speaker 3: build that habit, for example, is I'm trying to duct
Speaker 3: tape the boat into that habit. I have colleague Alisha,
Speaker 3: and she is the wise manager of lots of things,
Speaker 3: the one week of why employee, and she does like
Speaker 3: a million things.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that her job entails is dealing.
Speaker 3: With my uh flaws and like procrastination. And that's why
Speaker 3: my procrastination has very much become her problem. And so
Speaker 3: one of the things one of the things that we've
Speaker 3: been doing, which has been great, and again it's treating
Speaker 3: myself like a baby, but it sometimes that's what you
Speaker 3: need to do, is we have as either in person
Speaker 3: or on slack video nine thirty to twelve thirty, you know,
Speaker 3: these three hours in the morning, the three hours I
Speaker 3: want to be deep focusing at minimum. We have her
Speaker 3: either sitting next to me or she can see my
Speaker 3: screen or I share my screen with her on zoo
Speaker 3: and she's working on her own stuff. She's not just
Speaker 3: staring at my screen, but I me knowing that she
Speaker 3: might be looking at my screen, it's enough external pressure
Speaker 3: to be like, well, I'm not going to go dick
Speaker 3: around right now like someone's watching me, and then I
Speaker 3: find get my work done. I mean, she knows exactly
Speaker 3: what's supposed to be in my screen and what's not.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to go start texting when she's looking
Speaker 3: at my screen.
Speaker 4: So I'm just going to work.
Speaker 3: And it's not like procrest enters often you don't have
Speaker 3: to drag them, you know, clawing and fighting to work.
Speaker 4: You just have to give them like a little.
Speaker 3: Push when they're like I don't want to It's like,
Speaker 3: oh okay, fine, right, So that to me is enough
Speaker 3: of a push to get me to do those three hours.
Speaker 3: So again, that's duct taping the boat because I still
Speaker 3: if Alicia's not there, then I won't do it. Probably
Speaker 3: fixing the boat means I don't need her anymore. I'm
Speaker 3: just going to do this because that's what I do, right,
Speaker 3: So that's what I'm aiming for. But in the meantime,
Speaker 3: I'm having someone who is going to make me feel
Speaker 3: ashamed to not be working when it's supposed to be working,
Speaker 3: and people do other kinds of duct tape. They'll have
Speaker 3: a friend, they owe a friend will they'll pay a
Speaker 3: friend some money and that money that that friend's going
Speaker 3: to donate that money to a cause they.
Speaker 4: Hate if they don't get their stuff done right.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of ways you can kind of
Speaker 3: you know, duct take the boat in the meantime, and
Speaker 3: that's that's mostly what I'm doing now.
Speaker 4: But I'm my goal in life is to not need
Speaker 4: the duct tape anymore.
Speaker 1: Working on let's talk about how do we fix the
Speaker 1: boat so you don't need the duct tape. What are
Speaker 1: some of the strategies that you're working on there to
Speaker 1: get to that utopian work life.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, if you read on you know, books
Speaker 3: on habits, you know there's real it's some you know,
Speaker 3: this is not some mystery thing. Your brain is a
Speaker 3: machine that has automated program that's running at all times.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of like sometimes have to go I
Speaker 3: will It'll be I'll woken up, come out out into
Speaker 3: the kitchen and I'll say, did I brush my teeth?
Speaker 4: And I literally don't know. I have to go and
Speaker 4: check it.
Speaker 3: The tooth brushes wet because brushing my teeth in the
Speaker 3: morning is so automated that my conscious brain doesn't even
Speaker 3: have any knowledge whether it happened, just unconsciously, I was
Speaker 3: thinking about something and I did it, and you.
Speaker 4: Know you usually answers, yes, oh yeah, I did, but
Speaker 4: I only remember because it was so it's so unconscious.
Speaker 3: Right, So that can be good, or that can work
Speaker 3: in our favor or against us. Right, if we have
Speaker 3: good habits, that's incredible. Like for example, like I never
Speaker 3: have to never procrastinate in brushing my teeth. I never
Speaker 3: miss a debt. It's not hard. I don't put any
Speaker 3: willpower into it because the automated program hasn't come. And
Speaker 3: so when we have good habits in general, our brain
Speaker 3: doesn't put it much resistance.
Speaker 4: We just do it. It's just it's just not even
Speaker 4: a question mark.
Speaker 3: You know, of course we're going to do it, and
Speaker 3: just do it and it's over and you don't think
Speaker 3: about it. It's it's when you don't have the habit
Speaker 3: you have to put in willpower. Now, especially when usually
Speaker 3: when you don't have the habit, it's because you have
Speaker 3: a bad habit. For a procrastinator, that habit, but you
Speaker 3: sit down in the computer to get to your work,
Speaker 3: and as soon as you look at the work and
Speaker 3: it's this is icky, without even thinking about it, your
Speaker 3: hand will just keyboard shortcut over to the chrome window
Speaker 3: or to your texts, and you'll start doing something else
Speaker 3: without even thinking about it or you know, like so
Speaker 3: you'll just be in a habit of procrastinating at the
Speaker 3: beginning of your work block, which then might you know,
Speaker 3: when you start procrastinating, it becomes even harder.
Speaker 4: The longer you go, the harder it is. See it
Speaker 4: out of that and get get to work.
Speaker 3: So so I would say that, like, that's what you're
Speaker 3: trying to do, is you're trying to have as many
Speaker 3: of the automated programs in your head working in line
Speaker 3: with your long term goals as possible. So I think
Speaker 3: that if you can get this is part of what
Speaker 3: I'm trying to do with.
Speaker 4: Alisha is just train my brain to like think, I wake.
Speaker 3: Up and procrastination like isn't happening right now, Like fun
Speaker 3: is not it's not what's on the menu.
Speaker 4: It's not even an option.
Speaker 3: Like I'm just like obviously i wake up and I'm
Speaker 3: like it sucks, but I'm in workmode and then suddenly
Speaker 3: I'm free in the afternoon and get my beau because
Speaker 3: you know, before I got into this routine, it would
Speaker 3: be the opposite.
Speaker 4: I wake up and I love waking up. Ah, there's
Speaker 4: my phone and all the things to look.
Speaker 3: At on my phone, and then like the way to
Speaker 3: make coffee and then maybe take a walk, maybe I'll
Speaker 3: call a friend. Like it would seem like oh so much,
Speaker 3: and it's like no, no, no, I want to train my
Speaker 3: brain to think this is that's later. None of that
Speaker 3: stuff happens now. This is this is serious time. So
Speaker 3: I think, yes, you want to And when you build
Speaker 3: those habits, you don't need the willpower anymore, right, and
Speaker 3: so it becomes a lot easier. So it seems like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is impossible to maintain these, you know, this kind
Speaker 3: of good schedule at first. If you've done it for
Speaker 3: a month straight, you will find often that it's kind
Speaker 3: of just happening now.
Speaker 4: It's not as hard as it used to be. Now
Speaker 4: to go one notch a deeper.
Speaker 3: Here's like the to me, like the true like long
Speaker 3: term underlying strategy underlying all of this is you have
Speaker 3: to change your identity from a procrastinator to a non procrastinator,
Speaker 3: you have to change your storyline. You have to convince
Speaker 3: yourself that you are someone who doesn't fuck around during
Speaker 3: your work block.
Speaker 4: I'm the kind of person who just does this.
Speaker 3: And I know that not because I think I am,
Speaker 3: because I know I am, because I just look at
Speaker 3: the last ten weeks, look at the last year.
Speaker 4: I'm just just just what I did right now. I
Speaker 4: don't have to convince myself I'm someone who brushes my
Speaker 4: teeth every morning.
Speaker 3: Because I actually am, and I have full confidence, self
Speaker 3: confidence that I'm going to do it again tomorrow, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to When it comes to will I procrastinate tomorrow?
Speaker 4: Will I will?
Speaker 3: I will? I work in my work zone right the
Speaker 3: way I want to. It's less of a I don't
Speaker 3: feel as confident in it now. I view it as
Speaker 3: like there's kind of this awareness in your head that's watching.
Speaker 3: I call it the spectator, and it's watching everything that
Speaker 3: happens and a picture that spectator is betting on, whether
Speaker 3: you know. I always think of the you know, the
Speaker 3: procrastinator's mind as a rational decision maker and an instat
Speaker 3: gratification monkey.
Speaker 4: And that's what I talked about in the Ted talk,
Speaker 4: and these two.
Speaker 3: Characters are battling for control of the wheel and the
Speaker 3: procrastinators everyone has that. But the procrastinator's problem is that
Speaker 3: the monkey is winning the wrong times. But I don't
Speaker 3: think you're either of those. I think that you truly
Speaker 3: are behind them. Your spectator is watching this, and if
Speaker 3: that spectator thinks the monk he's going to win, the
Speaker 3: monkey's probably going to win. That spectator believes no, no, no,
Speaker 3: Like I think that the rational, the grown up in
Speaker 3: the head, is going to win out here, Probably the
Speaker 3: grown up will because that spectator's belief is like self confidence,
Speaker 3: and that feeds into what's going to happen. So this
Speaker 3: is why I think self fulfilling prophecies are very real.
Speaker 3: Like whatever the spectator believes is going to happen usually
Speaker 3: does because that's where your confidence lies, and.
Speaker 4: The spectator isn't Again, it's just rational.
Speaker 3: It's just looking at, well, what happened before, Like if
Speaker 3: I procrastinated money through Thursday, the spectator I wake up
Speaker 3: in the morning, and that spectators on Friday thinking this
Speaker 3: is you know, deep down, no way, no way am
Speaker 3: I going to.
Speaker 4: Actually do what I'm supposed to do today. Right there,
Speaker 4: When you have that thought, you're probably going to mess
Speaker 4: it up.
Speaker 3: You're probably not going to do what you're supposed to
Speaker 3: do that day because you don't believe it yourself.
Speaker 4: So how do you change that?
Speaker 3: Right? How do it? That's this this vicious cycle. That's
Speaker 3: why procrastinators get stuck for years. The vicious cycle is
Speaker 3: because you believe you're going to fail, so you do,
Speaker 3: which enforces the belief that you're going to fail, so
Speaker 3: you do again. Right, you have to David has to
Speaker 3: beat Goliath somehow, Right, you have to.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 3: That's why I'm using, for example, my colleague Alisha as
Speaker 3: a kind of an assistant in this. I'm trying to
Speaker 3: create ways to help David beat Goliath. A few times upset,
Speaker 3: and then the spectators start to think, huh, well, maybe
Speaker 3: actually here, maybe I've changed, Maybe this is a different
Speaker 3: person now, Maybe I am not the procrastinator I used
Speaker 3: to be. That's the kind of thinking that can lead
Speaker 3: to genuine like I really don't do it anymore.
Speaker 4: I just stop doing it one day.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of jumble thoughts because I'm like
Speaker 3: I think about this all the time, obviously, but I
Speaker 3: think It's like things like you know, you can talk
Speaker 3: about habits and stuff all day, but deep down, it's
Speaker 3: like you have to just do it enough you start
Speaker 3: to believe that I am someone who has changed, and
Speaker 3: then you actually will be someone who has changed.
Speaker 1: I'm intrigued that you go straight to habits as opposed
Speaker 1: to purpose when we talk about procrastination. I remember a
Speaker 1: while ago when I had Adam Grant on the show
Speaker 1: and he talked about how he will reward himself after
Speaker 1: doing a chunk of deep focused work, which social media,
Speaker 1: and then I asked him, well, what brings you back
Speaker 1: to your work, Like how do you not get lost
Speaker 1: in that social media spiral? And he says, well, I
Speaker 1: want to work. I'm really clear on why I work
Speaker 1: and I love it and I feel that way about
Speaker 1: my work too. But I procrastinate a lot, and I'm
Speaker 1: curious what role does loving what you do? I mean,
Speaker 1: you write and draw for a living that is most
Speaker 1: people in many people's dream job, and you get to
Speaker 1: do it, yet you're still procrastinating. So where does purpose
Speaker 1: and loving what you do fit in?
Speaker 3: My work has a ton of purpose to me? Right,
Speaker 3: I feel like you don't feel very lucky to get
Speaker 3: to do what I do, and I feel like it matters.
Speaker 3: And so I do feel that way, right, and like
Speaker 3: you that that's not enough.
Speaker 4: Because here's the thing. The work I had, the work.
Speaker 3: I do has a lot of long term meaning, right,
Speaker 3: it has macro meaning finishing a blog post and putting
Speaker 3: it out feels amazing.
Speaker 4: Right, It's this reward you get. But that's not so.
Speaker 3: The instant gratification monkey in your head can't think launch.
Speaker 4: I can't see that big picture.
Speaker 3: So the rational decision maker is this is this prefrontal
Speaker 3: cortex part of our brain that can see the big
Speaker 3: picture and plan I had. It's this amazing thing that
Speaker 3: separates humans from so many other animals. The instant gratification
Speaker 3: monkey is much more of an ancient part of your
Speaker 3: brain that is shared with a lot of animals that
Speaker 3: wants to that is not in the world it evolved into.
Speaker 3: It's like a software program that evolved to live in
Speaker 3: a world that we don't live in anymore. So this
Speaker 3: idea of writing, working on writing that sometime fourteen months
Speaker 3: from that is going to be published as a book,
Speaker 3: that part of my brain just like doesn't it can't
Speaker 3: get excited about it now a tweet. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: I tweet a ton because the tweet is instant gratification.
Speaker 3: So and when I tweet, I try to write meaningful
Speaker 3: stuff too. The purpose exists there too, and it's much
Speaker 3: easier to do and not procrastinate because you get immediate
Speaker 3: feedback and mediate reward. Is the rational decision maker knows
Speaker 3: about how much purpose and meaning there is, But the
Speaker 3: instant gratification monkey isn't that meaning to me? Usually it
Speaker 3: comes I don't like the doing the actual work very much.
Speaker 3: I love putting the work out there. I love when
Speaker 3: I hear that the work resonates with other people, right.
Speaker 3: I love when the work connects my brain to other brains.
Speaker 3: That doesn't happen while I'm working there. That's just me alone,
Speaker 3: And so then the reward's not there yet. The reward's
Speaker 3: all coming later. And so the purpose I can know it,
Speaker 3: you know rationally in my head that there's purpose, but
Speaker 3: I don't feel it in that primal part. And that's
Speaker 3: the reason that I will go on the internet and
Speaker 3: start sticking around as a five minute break, and now
Speaker 3: it's four hours later, because it.
Speaker 4: Becomes this the instant gratification.
Speaker 3: Monkey just wants to resist something that you have to
Speaker 3: actually work hard on that's not perfectible. You know, I
Speaker 3: once was wondering, I've spent so much time crushing these
Speaker 3: hard crossword puzzles, you know, New York Times Saturdays and Fridays,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking, why don't I procrastinate on that? Right?
Speaker 3: Why is that somehow fun? It's hard? It's a challenge,
Speaker 3: right Versus then working on this Microsoft word doc when
Speaker 3: I'm trying to figure out how to outline this next section?
Speaker 4: Isn't that also a puzzle?
Speaker 3: And I think the answer is that it's it's not perfectible.
Speaker 3: You know, there's some there's some kind of thing, primal
Speaker 3: thing that the crossroad puzzle taps into that the that
Speaker 3: you know, working on long term, more abstract stuff just
Speaker 3: doesn't that, you know, it doesn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We will be back with Tim soon where we talk
Speaker 1: about his process for visualizing ideas. And if you have
Speaker 1: read any of Tim's incredibly popular blog posts, you will
Speaker 1: know how amazingly talented Tim is at visualizing ideas to
Speaker 1: make them stick. If you're looking for more tips to
Speaker 1: improve the way that you work, I write a short
Speaker 1: fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered
Speaker 1: that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets
Speaker 1: that I'm loving through the interesting research findings. You can
Speaker 1: sign up for that at Howiwork dot code That's how
Speaker 1: I Work dot co.
Speaker 2: I want to dig into the.
Speaker 1: Three hour workday which he just described where you're sharing
Speaker 1: your screen with a lee shot and I love the
Speaker 1: sound of that strategy. What are you doing with the
Speaker 1: other five hours? Like, are you making that more black
Speaker 1: and white? Because you were saying the problem is that
Speaker 1: it's gray and it's this dark playground.
Speaker 2: So what do you do with that other five hours
Speaker 2: of the workday.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, there's just always a lot of
Speaker 4: stuff to do.
Speaker 3: When I say deep focus, I mean it's like to
Speaker 3: deep focus on the thing that's most important, right, and
Speaker 3: sometimes that's.
Speaker 4: Something that's not urgent. You know, have you've heard of
Speaker 4: the Eisenhower matrix?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Right, So it's.
Speaker 3: Arranging everything by how urgent it is and how important
Speaker 3: it is. You make a square, right, so important is
Speaker 3: the top, and then it gets less important as you
Speaker 3: go down, and it gets more.
Speaker 4: Urgent as you go to the left.
Speaker 3: The point is that a lot of times we spend
Speaker 3: a ton of our time gets sucked.
Speaker 4: Up doing the stuff that's urgent but not important.
Speaker 3: So that's emails, that's meetings often you know, sometimes there
Speaker 3: you know, it's errands, it's paying bills, it's taking care
Speaker 3: of your dogs or your kids. Again, it's not that
Speaker 3: this stuff isn't important, but it's stuff that has to
Speaker 3: happen urgently and and and the definition of important here
Speaker 3: is does it contribute to your long term goals, values
Speaker 3: or mission. And usually we spend a lot of this
Speaker 3: time doing this urgent stuff. It doesn't actually contribute to.
Speaker 4: Our long term goals, values and mission.
Speaker 3: Now, ideally, of course the important stuff would also be urgent, right,
Speaker 3: so then you're forced to do the importance. But for
Speaker 3: most of us, the really important long term work we
Speaker 3: need we want to work on, you know. And you know,
Speaker 3: whether it's improving as a person or getting better at
Speaker 3: you know, building a new skill, or working on a
Speaker 3: book that you've always wanted to write, or trying to
Speaker 3: get good at the guitar because you want to put
Speaker 3: out an album and that really, we deeply would affect
Speaker 3: our happiness if we could just do it. Those things
Speaker 3: usually don't have deadlines, on right. Those things often are
Speaker 3: very important, but they're not urgent.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That can also extend outside work, seeing your family enough,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, spending quality time with your your
Speaker 3: your family, or going to the gym whatever, that's that's
Speaker 3: this this this this important but not urgent pile of stuff.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of the thing I think a lot
Speaker 3: of us need to be spending that three hours, you know,
Speaker 3: just like stuff where it's like this is a sacred
Speaker 3: space for whatever.
Speaker 4: The most important project.
Speaker 3: Is the stuff that's really itchy, to stuff that's really
Speaker 3: hard to do, the stuff that like matters that in
Speaker 3: thirty years I'll look back and like this will be
Speaker 3: part of something that mattered and I'll still know that then.
Speaker 3: Right now, if you can do that for three hours,
Speaker 3: five days a week, that's huge, right, that's a ton
Speaker 3: of time.
Speaker 4: Sixty hours a month. I mean, you will make incredible progress.
Speaker 3: You can write a whole book just with those three hours,
Speaker 3: five days a week in one year, right, even less
Speaker 3: for some people.
Speaker 4: Outside of that.
Speaker 3: Is all the other stuff, right, there's so there's a
Speaker 3: huge everyone if you just live in a civilization today,
Speaker 3: we have a huge amount of this emails, there's texts,
Speaker 3: There's there's bills and errands and things that need to
Speaker 3: get done.
Speaker 4: There's just your to do list, right, and a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff at work.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's just you're trying to you want to reorganize
Speaker 4: your all your folders.
Speaker 3: You want to like, you know, you know, meet with
Speaker 3: the developer who's going over your new website.
Speaker 4: You know, you want to have a.
Speaker 3: Meet all that stuff. It's it matters, and it's work
Speaker 3: you have to do. But but the three hours is
Speaker 3: reserved for something that if you could just make.
Speaker 4: Progress on it, your whole life would be totally changed.
Speaker 3: And if you don't make progress on it, like you'll
Speaker 3: really build up long term regrets.
Speaker 4: It's this really important project.
Speaker 3: So now I'm saying this as if like every day
Speaker 3: I do my three hours of like you.
Speaker 4: Know work for me.
Speaker 3: That for me, the really important thing right now is
Speaker 3: finishing this book I've been working on and getting you know,
Speaker 3: writing right, writing and putting out making content, creating you know,
Speaker 3: the content that I want to put it. That's the
Speaker 3: most important stuff. This is a plan, This is a
Speaker 3: work in progress, right. I often hear some mistakes on me.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I will We'll do it for a while, and
Speaker 3: then I'll have a couple early meetings, so then we
Speaker 3: won't do it for a couple of days, and then
Speaker 3: I find like a week later, oh and then Lisha's like,
Speaker 3: you want to get back on the nine thirty three,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, yes, but it's easy to kind of
Speaker 3: just let it slip. Secondly, it's easy too if I
Speaker 3: have made a good a lot of progress to power
Speaker 3: through and keep working, which isn't not not isn't necessarily
Speaker 3: a bad thing. But I find that it's very hard
Speaker 3: to have a streak of good days if I have
Speaker 3: one like great, great day, you know, as weird as
Speaker 3: that sounds. If I like power through and I work
Speaker 3: like six hours, it's really hard to come back the
Speaker 3: next day and just do those three. So I'm trying
Speaker 3: to stop after three, but I often find myself not stopping.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I think I think the way to think
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 3: Is what this is for me, at least three hours,
Speaker 3: five days a week of is sacred time that no
Speaker 3: one else And this means when I say deep focus.
Speaker 4: I mean you're not on your phone.
Speaker 3: Maybe you take a five minute break, you know, each hour,
Speaker 3: something that's planned. But like you're not cooking food, you're
Speaker 3: not taking phone calls, you're not checking your email or
Speaker 3: anything like you are like, it's like, think of it
Speaker 3: as a final exam. You know, you know the zone
Speaker 3: you're in when you're you go and do a final
Speaker 3: exam right in college or whatever, and you're there and
Speaker 3: you're like, you know, it's just like hardcore and you finish,
Speaker 3: you're like, ah, done, time's up, right, that's the goal.
Speaker 4: That's where you want to get.
Speaker 3: Where you're in, like final exam of the three hours,
Speaker 3: which means you've all your your whole schedule, your calendar.
Speaker 4: Takes this into account.
Speaker 3: Like that is you might as well be you're just
Speaker 3: off the map for those hours and you plan everything
Speaker 3: around that. And then when that's done, you could say okay,
Speaker 3: and now you could say the rest of the day,
Speaker 3: you know, you can work on the rest of your life.
Speaker 4: Maybe you fail at that and you just procrastinate. It
Speaker 4: doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: The days already success you already want. And likewise, the week,
Speaker 3: even if the week you didn't get all the other
Speaker 3: little things done, you got behind your to do list,
Speaker 3: for what really matters, the week is a success.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about visualizing ideas. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's something that you're incredibly well known for, and I
Speaker 1: feel like some of the ways that you've visualized ideas
Speaker 1: in your blog posts, it just I feel like.
Speaker 2: They're images that are etched in my head.
Speaker 1: Like I think about the tail end blog post that
Speaker 1: you wrote quite some time ago, and I feel like
Speaker 1: I will, you know, semi regularly think about the way
Speaker 1: you illustrated the course of a life and how much
Speaker 1: time we have. What's your approach to firstly deciding what
Speaker 1: concepts you're writing about deserve worthy of an illustration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's always a question mark, is when to
Speaker 3: use writing versus.
Speaker 4: Visuals to get a point across.
Speaker 3: There's there's certain times for both, right, There's obviously writing
Speaker 3: needs to take the meat of the stuff for me
Speaker 3: at least, and there's something that writing can do that
Speaker 3: visuals can't write like writing you can. There's just you know,
Speaker 3: language has has a lot of ability to get certain
Speaker 3: things across that that that.
Speaker 4: You can't do in a visual.
Speaker 3: But if there's certain times when like nothing is like
Speaker 3: a good visual Like so for example, with this how
Speaker 3: much time you have in your life? I could describe it.
Speaker 3: I could say here the number of weeks you have. Here,
Speaker 3: the number of months you have, But big numbers were
Speaker 3: not very you know, in writing, big numbers don't really
Speaker 3: have as much impact if you can, you know, so
Speaker 3: like I can say you have forty five.
Speaker 4: Hundred weeks the life.
Speaker 3: Okay, that kind of sounds like an endless number, and
Speaker 3: I'm not endless, but that's like forty five hundred okay whatever.
Speaker 3: You know, it doesn't sound that different than if I
Speaker 3: said forty five thousand. It's just kind of like some
Speaker 3: big number, right. But if I suddenly illustrate it and boom,
Speaker 3: you're looking at them all there they are, that's it.
Speaker 3: And especially I'll test it out sometimes I would do
Speaker 3: something like that and look and say, that looks like
Speaker 3: that looks like what the number sounds like. So what's
Speaker 3: the point of putting the visual in there. The wording
Speaker 3: is going to get the same is going to have
Speaker 3: the same effect. But when I've made that particular one,
Speaker 3: I looked at it and I said, wow, that is
Speaker 3: so much smaller than the number sounds. So that's a
Speaker 3: perfect time to do it, right. So I think sometimes
Speaker 3: there can be something that's funny, a like a comic
Speaker 3: can can be funnier than wording a lot of the time.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it can be more sticky and more memorable. So
Speaker 3: like I can talk about the instant gratification monkey and
Speaker 3: the panic monster and the rational decision maker all I want, right,
Speaker 3: But if it's just these long words, these terms versus
Speaker 3: a visual boom, it can stick.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: So so a visual can help it be, can help
Speaker 3: something come through that that it's not going through writing.
Speaker 3: It can help make things clearer, and it can help
Speaker 3: it be more memorable. So for me, I'm always there's
Speaker 3: no formula as I'm writing. I'm always thinking about you know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to do a visual just for the
Speaker 3: sake of doing it. Would would a visual help here?
Speaker 3: What a visual will help a lot here? Would it
Speaker 3: make things better? Can this whole paragraph, this whole section
Speaker 3: just be is one good visual.
Speaker 4: Can be better? I've also made mistakes before.
Speaker 3: I've done a visual that is kind of convoluted or
Speaker 3: doesn't accomplish that much, and I often and I will
Speaker 3: later come back and just look at it and think
Speaker 3: like this didn't pop, Like actually I would have just
Speaker 3: described this concept. I tried to get too cute here
Speaker 3: with like a visual that has like four dimensions and
Speaker 3: like has all this stuff, and I'm looking and I'm like.
Speaker 4: This just didn't work.
Speaker 3: And so I'm always trying to get better at that
Speaker 3: and like, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: How does one get better at visualizing things?
Speaker 4: Well, honestly, like I have a again, I'm lucky.
Speaker 3: The way my work works is that I try something,
Speaker 3: then I publish it, and then if it's not good,
Speaker 3: three hundred people are going to tell me how bad
Speaker 3: it is, and likewise, and likewise if something's if something's good, likewise,
Speaker 3: I can tell which drawings really clicked because I see
Speaker 3: them on Twitter. You know, people repost them, people want them,
Speaker 3: you know, people talk about.
Speaker 4: Them years later. That's the best way I know.
Speaker 3: If if a year later, you know, or multiple years later,
Speaker 3: I'm still seeing people talk about the visual, I know
Speaker 3: that it worked right, it was it did what I
Speaker 3: wanted to do. And then other visuals, there's visuals like
Speaker 3: there's so that the tail end was like kind of
Speaker 3: the second version of a post I did. The first
Speaker 3: one was called life and Weeks, which was just the
Speaker 3: week's thing before I started talking about time with people,
Speaker 3: and I did this, you know, fifty two week by
Speaker 3: ninety year grid right, and that I know has clicked
Speaker 3: because people have bought poster that I've made with it,
Speaker 3: people have bought t shirts and if people talk about it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: late in that same post, there's this other visual where
Speaker 3: I have this like really convoluted ven diagram, and I
Speaker 3: have never once heard anyone mention it again or talk
Speaker 3: about it or appraise it or tweet it. I've never
Speaker 3: And I looked at it and I barely remembered it
Speaker 3: was that there you go, So right there, I'm getting
Speaker 3: feedback and learning what's good and what's working what's not
Speaker 3: in real time by feedback.
Speaker 4: So that's huge.
Speaker 3: Now, some people obviously don't have that particular thing. Maybe
Speaker 3: they write, but they don't have comments on their blog
Speaker 3: or whatever. You know, there's a lot of reasons that
Speaker 3: you wouldn't be able to get feedback, and I think
Speaker 3: it's just experience.
Speaker 4: I think, like it's doing a lot of visuals.
Speaker 3: Each one you often have an idea of what it
Speaker 3: should be, and then as you do it, it evolves
Speaker 3: into something different and you just learn so much about
Speaker 3: your own skills by doing that. You just you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes you stumble upon as you're making a visual upon
Speaker 3: like a new idea that you could use with the
Speaker 3: visual and then.
Speaker 4: You can repeat that in the future.
Speaker 3: But you never would have learned that just by like
Speaker 3: you know, so I think just a lot of repetition,
Speaker 3: and ideally repetition with feedback, yeah.
Speaker 4: Helps them. The same thing goes for writing, of course.
Speaker 3: I mean the best way to be good at writing
Speaker 3: is to write a lot, especially if you can write
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 4: And get feedback as you go.
Speaker 3: I mean, but even just writing a lot in a
Speaker 3: journal alone, like, it's just it'll it'll improve, like anything
Speaker 3: shooting a basketball a million times, like you'll get better
Speaker 3: at shooting the basketball.
Speaker 1: Tim, I wish, I wish I had like all day
Speaker 1: with you because it's it's just been so absolutely inspiring
Speaker 1: connecting with you after having followed your blog for so
Speaker 1: many years.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much for your time. For listeners
Speaker 2: that want to consume more Tim Urban and wait for why,
Speaker 2: what is the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 3: Just my blog way dot com and the email list
Speaker 3: is where you like can go to know that a
Speaker 3: new post is up, because otherwise I post very sporadically
Speaker 3: and it's really annoying to just check the site for
Speaker 3: a new post. So go to the site and you
Speaker 3: can sign up for the email list there. And then also,
Speaker 3: I'm with wy on Twitter. I tweet a lot because
Speaker 3: that's what I do, and I'm procrastinating.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Thank you so much, Tim, and thank you for
Speaker 2: spending this last hour with me.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you so much for RepA.
Speaker 1: One of the highlights of this chat with Tim for
Speaker 1: me was his accountability strategy with his assistant Alisha. So
Speaker 1: I recently hired a new assistant who has just started
Speaker 1: working with me, and I'm very keen to give this
Speaker 1: strategy a go. I know that I personally find it
Speaker 1: so helpful to know that I'm accountable to someone other
Speaker 1: than myself when I am.
Speaker 2: Trying to plow through hard, deep work.
Speaker 1: How I Work is produced by Inventim with production support
Speaker 1: from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 2: The producer for this episode was.
Speaker 1: Liam Riordan and thank you tomt Nimba, who the audio
Speaker 1: mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much
Speaker 1: better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 2: See you next time.